Microsoft's Longhorn Faces Antitrust Scrutiny

benore writes "The Department of Justice will be reviewing Microsoft's Longhorn product as part of the company's antitrust settlement. One analyst opines that Mircosoft is appearing to soften its image to become kinder and gentler. 'They don't want people to hate them anymore. They've learned from their mistakes.' Hmmm."

Comments

One or t'other...

[Randy Wang]

So, now, instead of hating them for being the monopolistic, evil, brutish and cruel giant that we all like to think of them, they want us to praise them for their strides forward in the fields of Digital Rights Management, ever-retreating deadlines and anti-crapware stance.

I, for one, welcome our new (helpful) overlords...

Mircosoft ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh great, there is another monopoly called Mircosoft?

One monopoly, we could handle... but this is just ridiculous...

Whats the point ?

[naden]

All third-party browsers e.g. Firefox and media players e.g. Quicktime ask whether you wish to make them the default when they are opened for the first time. So what is a control panel supposed to achieve ? The effort for the user is in the downloading and installing of the third-party software.

The DOJ should be instead insisting that Microsoft bundle third-party alternatives with the OS not just providing a control panel.

Re:Whats the point ?

[TheRaven64]

For boxed copies of Windows, I agree 100% - it should include anything MS wants to put in the box. For OEM copies it's a different matter. It should include the kernel, basic subsystems, Windows Explorer, and very little else. OEMs could then be free to decide what media player, office suite, browser, etc. they bundle, and customers could then buy from differentiated OEMs. MS should not be allowed to use their effective monopoly in the OS market to create monopolies in other markets (e.g. the web browser market), and this is exactly what the antitrust laws state.

Re:Too late, Bill

[TheRaven64]

Windows 98 really was a huge mistake. I was happy using NT 4 when it was released. If they had released a Windows NT 4.5 with proper DirectX (not the two-versions-old, and 3D-acceleration-may-work-but-probably-won't version that NT4 had) and with a more friendly device configuration GUI it would have been far more usable than Windows 98. This was even on the MS roadmaps released before Window 95. '95 and NT4 were due to have a single successor. Eventually this emerged as 2000 (I was using it since NT 5 beta 2, and it's not a bad system). Windows ME was a travesty (why did it even need to exist? Windows 2000 was meant to be the upgrade path for '98 users. Instead it just gave game developers an excuse not to support 2K, forcing people to dual boot if they wanted to play games and do real work), and Windows XP is just a whole string of UI mistakes built on top of security holes (many of which come from the Windows 98 era).

I went to Linux, loathed it, went to FreeBSD, liked it, and finally got a Mac.

Um, Trusted Computing?

[SirGarlon]

One area that DOJ regulators will be looking at, in particular, is a control panel in Longhorn that facilitates use of a browser and media player other than the Microsoft versions that will be pre-built into the system.

Great. We have government "experts" who think the choice of media player really important and they aren't even looking at the whole Trusted Computing initiative and the monopolistic implications thereof.

Re:i HATE microsoft!

[Tim C]

No offence, but this is offtopic; congratulations on getting modded up to +5 for a post that has almost nothing to do with the article. I don't blame yo, but the sheep-like moderators, modding up anything anti-MS and pro-linux.

Two things I sort of take issue with, though:

as well as forced upgrades

What forced upgrades, how? My company is still using Office 2000, and have not been "forced" to upgrade, despite some clients using Office XP; the documents still open just fine. There are still machines running NT 4; similarly, nothing is forcing us to upgrade them. Sure, support is running out/has run out, but the same is true of older releases of Linux distros. Without a leet C hacker or two on staff, businesses using them are similarly "forced" to upgrade if they wish to have continued support.

will be advocating limiting the use of MS products to anyone who will listen

Rather you should be advocating the use of the best tool for the job. If that tool happens to be from MS, then so be it. MS isn't the answer to everything, but then neither is Linux.